Shipment or storage of products supported on pallets commonly requires strapping of those products to the pallets to prevent shifting of the products during shipment. For example, when shipping pallets supporting printed material such as magazines or printed advertisements, straps are wrapped around the pallets to secure bundles of these printed products to the pallets. Additionally, two pallets are commonly conveyed in stacked relation. To prohibit shifting of the top pallet and the material on the pallet, straps are wrapped around both pallets to secure those pallets together.
In prior art processes for handling and shipping printed products such as magazines and printed advertisements, a pallet supporting bundles of magazines or other printed product is wrapped with a shrink wrap film. A second wrapped pallet is then placed on top of the first wrapped pallet. The stacked pallets are then placed on a roller conveyor of a strapping machine using a forklift, and the stacked pallets are conveyed on the roller conveyor through the strapping machine where straps are wrapped around both of the pallets to secure the pallets together and to prevent shifting of the materials supported by the pallets. Strapping machines of this type for use in wrapping straps around the strapped pallets are manufactured by EAM-Mosca Corporation, west Hazelton, Pa. The conveyor of the strapping machine then conveys the strapped pallets to a discharge area where a forklift is used to engage the strapped pallets and move them to a storage location or to a truck for shipping.
The strapping machines manufactured by EAM-Mosca include a strap feeding head which feeds an end of a strap into a channel. The channel surrounds the conveyor such that the end of the strap can be fed through the channel around the stacked pallets and back to the strap feeding head. The end of the strap is gripped by the strap feeding head and the strap feeding head will then retract the length of the strapping material while gripping the free end of the strap. The channels are provided with inwardly facing slots which permit the strap to be pulled out of the channels inwardly as the strap feeding head retracts the length of strap material and such that the strap is pulled snugly around the pallet supported on the conveyor. The strap feeding head further includes means for clamping or fixing two ends of the strap together and cutting off the remaining length of strap material.
In other prior art arrangements, stacked pallets are secured together by operators who manually wrap straps around the pallets and crimp the straps together. This manual process is time consuming because the straps can be difficult to handle and requires care by the operators to ensure that the pallets are securely strapped together.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,905,448 illustrates a machine for wrapping stretch wrap around a product supported on a pallet and includes a means for wrapping stretch wrap around a pallet supported by a forklift and wherein the forklift moves forwardly to a position where the pallet and material thereon are wrapped and wherein the forklift backs away from the wrapping machine once the shrink wrap is wound around the pallet and product.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,079,565 illustrates a machine for wrapping stretch wrap around a pallet and product supported on the pallet and wherein a forklift can carry the pallet into the machine where the stretch wrap is wrapped around the pallet and material, and wherein the forklift then backs up out of the wrapping machine for delivery of the product.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,282,700 illustrates a forklift carrying a stretch wrap machine which can wrap plastic film around the pallet and material on the pallet while the pallet is being carried by the forklift.